Beware the Witch-Hunting Impulse

My experience today reading Joe Konrath’s “Writers Code of Ethics” was probably exactly what he intended. From points one through three—never write or pay for reviews of your own work—I was in complete agreement. From points four through six—don’t ask friends or fans to review your work—I was thinking, “wow, that’s pretty strict.”  By point nine—”I will never allow anyone to send out copies of my books to be reviewed”— I was suspicious. Long before I got to his twenty-third and final point of ethics, I realized he had veered into satire.

What spurred Konrath’s gradual escalation into ethical absurdity was a manifesto of sorts by a group of authors condemning other authors behind a recent rash of “sock-puppet,” or faked, and purchased book reviews. His aim, I take it, was not to defend dishonest marketing, but to warn us against mob instincts:

“All of you pointing your fingers and proclaiming your piety? Get back to working on your books, not judging your peers.”

In the recent uproar over the apparent multiple plagiarisms and fabrications by Jonah Lehrer and one instance of plagiarism by Fareed Zakaria, I’ve sensed a disquieting rush to judgment. In each case, the acts are indefensible. But for those of us striving to be ethical, unreservedly condemning them, as Barry Eisler puts it, is a dead end. That lack of reserve leads all too readily to overreactions and unfair accusations.

Viewing ethical mistakes in black and white makes life simple. But we can learn more, and become better people and better writers, by trying to understand the complex intentions and motivations behind those errors.

The Coming Death of Self-Publishing

It won’t be long before self-publishing as a concept is dead.

Dance Macabre dans l'Imprimerie by Mathias Huss, Lyon 1499That’s not to say that the activity of publishing, whether it’s done by an individual, a small loose-knit group, or a corporation, is in decline. In fact, it’s healthier and growing faster than ever. But as an implicit indicator of quality, the idea inherent in the phrase “self-publishing” increasingly serves no purpose (other than a historical one).

In the book world, at least, it’s been common to distinguish between three types of publishing: traditional publishing, vanity or subsidized publishing, and self-publishing. (As Joel Friedlander notes in his excellent Self Publisher’s Companion, there is a fourth model, cooperative publishing, that blends aspects of traditional and subsidized publishing, but it is relatively rare.)

The traditional model is built around a system of gatekeepers—agents, acquisitions editors, and other publishing professionals whose role is to make judgments about what will and won’t be published. Until recently, the only practical alternative for aspiring authors was vanity publishing: paying a company a large sum of money to produce their book, with little or no marketing or sales assistance.

These distinctions were once a reliable measure of quality. Traditionally published works were probably good; vanity publications were probably bad.

But the rise of self-publishing has complicated the equation. Digital technology has made it possible for authors to produce, market, and distribute their own high-quality, low-cost books, whether in electronic or paper form. And by cutting out the middlemen—all those traditional gatekeepers and their expenses—authors now have the potential to make much more money from their works. It’s a compelling opportunity: all those bad, amateur writers who self-publish are now being joined by hordes of good, professional ones.

As a result, traditional publishers are losing their monopoly on quality. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they are going the way of the dinosaur—though Joe Konrath might say otherwise. But it does argue that who publishes a book, or how it is published, will ultimately no longer bear on the quality of the book. Traditional publishers produce lots of crappy books. Self-publishers, increasingly, are producing lots of great ones.

It won’t be long before we can safely say, to paraphrase someone or other, that there are no traditional publishers, there are no self-publishers, there are only publishers.